This Moment That Shatters My Soul
by lfh
Summary: AU slash. It's London in 1920, and Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy are attending the same university. A timeless and scorching affair ensues. Harry/Draco, Hermione/Cho, Remus/Sirius, maybe more.
1. One

This Sunday morning has found me restless. The summer air carries an aberrant chill, giving the drizzling weather a strange purity. To attend church is out of the question; if my absence damns me to perdition, at least it will be warm there. I choose instead to wander the campus.  
  
How dreary weather does intensify the world! When compared to this sky, even the grass holds its own splendor. Entranced by its overwhelming colour, my thoughts are immediately those of you, Potter, a young man in my physics class. Your eyes are that same fervent green even against brighter skies. I have only rarely heard you speak, when the professor has called upon you to answer a question. Your voice is clear, neither lingering nor commanding, sounding almost bored with the mundanity of whatever the professor has asked.  
  
I do wonder how your voice would sound screaming my name in my bed.  
  
It was rather wise of me to avoid church this morning, now that I think on it.  
  
I continue walking mindlessly, reveling in how the world is presently quiet. Serene, almost. Dreamlike. I am entirely alone in the outdoors.  
  
And then I hear voices.  
  
I have come upon a group of young men playing an informal game of football. How idealised and timeless their bodies seem, kicking the ball about and fighting one another over it. I watch the game for a short time, until I notice another spectator far off to my left. As I walk closer, out of compelling curiousity, the figure's identity becomes apparent.  
  
It is you, Potter.  
  
You are stretched out on the grass, supported by your arms. Next to you is a book, tossed aside in favor of observing the game. A nostalgic sadness is suspended in your eyes.  
  
You see me. Your eyes run frightened, lewd races over my body. And then they are back staring at the grass, in visual contact with their brethren.  
  
I should speak to you. At least introduce myself and make polite conversation. Yet the moment, the apprehensive moment, lingers like a spectre and clasps my throat. Choking me even, until I am sweating on such a cool morning.  
  
I wish Hermione were here. Were she here, she would cajole me into approaching you and speaking, call me ravishing until I would blush. She is convinced that you fancy me intensely; perhaps her intuition holds true. After all, she does have her love, Cho, to keep her company. We often joke of the sheer chance that we two sodomites would be such close friends with neither of us being prostitutes. Such would be the humour of God's mistakes, I suppose.  
  
I realise now that the moment I speak to you will not be significant. It will be the moments that shall hopefully follow that will weigh heavier. And so I walk closer towards you, closer towards your orbit. You turn around to face me, still sitting on the grass, and I stand above you. Your hair and my hair, your clothes and my clothes, they are plastered to our skins from the rain. We must look like two small boys, lost and fumbling for our destinies. Our eyes meet, locking in a way that transcends all rain. And my mouth opens as though a rusty hinge newly oiled, and words trickle out.  
  
"Good morning, there." 


	2. Two

II have had difficulty sleeping ever since I began my studies at the university. I am lonely, and that torments me away from the clutch of sleep. However, that is not the entire matter at hand: there exists my godfather, Black, and his companion, Lupin, as well as scattered friends for a semblance of loving contact. Even more than loneliness am I consumed by shame, the shame of love.  
  
The shame isn't for that I desire men; it would be static as such if I instead longed for women. O, this shame is permeating; I feel as though my slightest desirous glance tarnishes the beauty of its victim, as though my love is a disease that pollutes. Every young man I have ever lusted for, it is as if my castings were automatically tattooed upon each of them, and I back away in fear of what I have done.  
  
Confident that I am alone in such emotion, I have become more reclusive, more reticent in the past year. I walk around, pacing my dorm room or wandering the campus, at all hours, sleep being a lost myth now, in search of truth. I sit under the ceiling or sky, smoking cigarettes until my brain feels liquid within my skull. Lately, I've begun sitting in cafes, drinking endless cups of coffee just as I sometimes chain smoke cigarettes, watching bystanders as a spectator to the game of their public existence.  
  
To be fully honest, I don't terribly mind it all. A numbness creeps over me, and I become so accustomed to my solitude that I can imagine no other lifestyle. But occasionally, that second skin is pierced, ripped to shards by stabbings of pure light, when I see you. You are beautiful, amazing to my eyes. Malfoy. You are in my physics class, and I often catch your eyes, those argentine, stormy orbs, upon me. I dare not surmise your thoughts. I see you often in my favourite café, drinking Viennese coffee with a lovely young lady. She is not your girlfriend, I have concluded, a close friend more like. O, how I have tried to recede into myself and live as some sort of monk! But Malfoy, your mere presence tugs me back into the world of desires and dreaming./I  
  
I awake this Sunday morning, and it is raining lightly. I have only slept for a few hours, but my bed rejects me upon my wake. So I wash and dress, realizing that the sun is just rising. I eat no breakfast, only taking a textbook so that I may perhaps study, and make towards an area near the athletic fields, where young men from the university often play games of football. On some occasions, I would join them. I enjoyed football immensely back home. But not lately; I've come to prefer watching instead.  
  
Naturally, it being so early, the field is comfortably empty as the night surrenders the sky to the sun, the rain still falling quietly. I curl up on the grass like a fetal flower and watch the sheer art of the heavens unfold, feeling like the smallest being on earth.  
  
A few hours must pass, for a group of young men slowly fills the field, and they begin a game of football. Daylight fully asserted, albeit shrouded by the never-ending clouds with their rain, I sit up and examine my textbook. Physics, it turns out; I wasn't looking when I brought it with me here. I attempt to study, but the equations are tedious against the day. Between the lessons' lines, I see you in that class, watching me in supine resplendence. My textbook appears to be of little use to me this morning, I realise. I cast it aside, musing instead on the game being played. How immortal sports as these are. The football players are their grandfathers and their grandsons, eternally playing, immune to the whims of the outside world. It enchants me to watch their restless dance, so akin to the swirl of Time.  
  
A figure appears to my distant right, the only other spectator to the game. The figure moves nearer to me. It is you. You see me, and I must quickly avert my eyes to regard the grass instead. Minutes pass, minutes that swell and burst as my thoughts. Finally, you move even nearer, until you stand in front of me, looking down into my spectacles. Your hair, skin, and clothes are soaked wet, detracting nothing from your form. Our eyes meet, and in my mind, the now- invisible stars collide. I could be content to do this staring for hours. Then you speak, and I understand how much more I want from you.  
  
"Good morning, there," you say. 


	3. Three

"Oh, hello. Good morning, although it is a strange one in which to walk around." (Rising slowly, to not feel so small.)  
  
II must be a strange one to desire to search around in you./I  
  
"But an equally strange one in which to study physics." (Observing two sets of eyes making parallel lines.)  
  
II am but a strange one to crave within you to study our screams./I  
  
"The weather of this morning is not oft beloved, but I find it more lovely than vain Sol." (An uneasy shift, detesting the pretensions.)  
  
IYou would be beloved by me best if beloved by few others./I  
  
"Yet without days of sun, all mankind should perish." (Damning all pragmatism that damns beauty.)  
  
IDo you also catch on, lovely one, to what awful things the weather has turned into?/I  
  
"Then let all the world have their sun-filled skies, so long as I may have my clouds and rain on some small occasion." (Suppressing the desired declarations.)  
  
II care not if the world prefers other loves; I am glad without the world./I  
  
"And yet we are soaked with rain, heedless like young boys, and if you are like me, you haven't yet eaten.  
  
IO, how heedless I should be with your skin between my teeth./I  
  
I have breakfast in my dorm room. Would you care to join me there?"  
  
"Ah, I hadn't realized how hungry I was until now. Yes, I would like that very much."  
  
IYou have inspired in me such hunger in all organs but the stomach./I 


End file.
